McConnell Eyed Ryan Zinke for a Senate Seat. Donald Trump Had Other Ideas.

Donald J. Trump’s selection of Ryan Zinke, above, raised suspicions about how reliable an ally the president-elect will be for congressional Republicans.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The courtship of Ryan Zinke began months before the end of the presidential race. A Republican congressman from Montana and a former Navy SEAL commander, Mr. Zinke was approached over the summer by Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, about running for the Senate in 2018.

Mr. McConnell learned early this week that Mr. Trump had grown interested in Mr. Zinke to be secretary of the interior. Mr. McConnell quickly contacted both Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff, in an effort to head off the appointment, according to multiple Republican officials familiar with the calls.

Mr. Trump was not moved. He was so taken with Mr. Zinke during their meeting on Monday at Trump Tower that he offered him the position. Mr. Trump’s son Donald Jr. quashed a competing candidate, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State, because of her support for selling off public land, a senior Republican official said.

Mr. Trump’s defiant selection of Mr. Zinke, 55, dismayed Republicans in the capital and raised suspicions about how reliable an ally he will be for the party. Even as Mr. Trump has installed party stalwarts in a few cabinet departments, he has repeatedly shrugged off the requests of Republicans who have asked for help reinforcing their power in Congress.

And having flouted the party establishment throughout the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump now appears determined to go his own way in office, guided by personal chemistry and the opinions of his family members.

“Trump is following in the footsteps of a lot of presidents who focused on building their administrations first and they weren’t focused on the implications for Congress,” said Christopher Ruddy, the founder of the conservative magazine Newsmax and a friend of Mr. Trump. “Strategically, they would not want to hurt the Senate majority right now, but I think they’re not going to worry about who is going to run or not run, in two or four years, for a Senate seat.”

The Interior Department has not been the only front on which Mr. Trump has appeared indifferent to his party’s political considerations. The president-elect has also shown limited interest in an effort, spearheaded by Mr. Pence and Mr. Priebus and backed by Mr. McConnell, to install a Democratic senator in his cabinet in the hope of snatching away a newly vacant Senate seat.

Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a close adviser, unsettled Washington Republicans again on Friday when he said at an event in New York that Mr. Trump was closer on some issues to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the incoming Democratic leader, than to Mr. McConnell.

The choice of Mr. Zinke, however, aggravated the party and vividly illustrated how Mr. Trump’s improvisational, often impulsive style can collide with the best-laid plans of congressional Republicans.

And it underscored the limitations of both traditional political imperatives and Mr. Trump’s establishment-aligned advisers against the combination of Mr. Trump’s instincts, the wishes of his family and the preference of Stephen K. Bannon, the senior adviser to the president-elect and an admirer of Mr. Zinke.

With just one appointment, Mr. Trump snubbed the highest-ranking Republican woman in the House, Ms. McMorris Rodgers, imperiled the party’s chances in a key Senate race and likely triggered a special election for Mr. Zinke’s House seat.

Fred Davis, a Republican strategist who produced television commercials for Mr. Zinke’s campaigns, confirmed that national Republicans had been courting the congressman aggressively as an opponent for Mr. Tester.

But Mr. Davis, along with a handful of other high-level Republican strategists, said Mr. Zinke had been undecided on entering the race and described the Interior position as a tough job to turn down.

“He probably thinks he can do more for Montana and the country in that slot and he’s probably right,” Mr. Davis said, adding of the Senate race: “It would have been one of the biggest, toughest battles in the country and now I think Tester probably skates home free.”

Photo

Senator Mitch McConnell, left, the majority leader, had approached Mr. Zinke about running for the Senate in 2018.Credit
Al Drago/The New York Times

Mr. Trump also has not tapped a Democratic senator from a traditionally Republican state for his cabinet, a move that would have helped his party.

Party leaders encouraged Mr. Trump early in the transition to recruit two red-state Democratic senators into his administration to make it easier for Republicans to win those Senate seats in 2018, an idea embraced by Mr. Priebus and Mr. Pence.

Mr. Trump seemed at first to cooperate, meeting with senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota about potential cabinet appointments.

Mr. Trump opted instead for a third candidate: Rick Perry, the former Republican governor of Texas, an enthusiastic surrogate for Mr. Trump during the campaign who had been eyeing positions as secretary of defense or secretary of Homeland Security, only to see them slip away.

When Mr. Trump and Mr. Perry met at the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore the previous weekend and discussed the energy position there, Mr. Perry lobbied hard for the job, according to three people familiar with the conversation.

Mr. Trump came away impressed and announced him for the appointment a few days later.

Mr. Manchin, though, did not seem wounded. His flirtation with a president-elect who won West Virginia by 42 points had won him extensive press coverage at home, photographs in Trump Tower (he declined an invitation from Mr. Trump’s aides to avoid the press on his way in) and two coveted committee assignments courtesy of Mr. Schumer: Appropriations and Intelligence.

“We had a good connection,” Mr. Manchin said of his visit, noting that he repeatedly had to cancel on the president-elect and that Mr. Trump still accommodated his schedule. “I’ve about spoken to him more in the weeks since he’s been elected than I’ve spoken to President Obama in eight years.”

Ms. Heitkamp has not withdrawn her name from consideration yet, despite not being picked for either of the two posts she had been seeking, Energy or Interior. Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers are still optimistic that she can be convinced to become secretary of agriculture, one of the few cabinet positions yet to be filled.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

But Byron Dorgan, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota, among others, indicated she will not join.

And there is growing concern in Mr. Trump’s orbit that Ms. Heitkamp, much like Mr. Manchin, is enjoying the political benefit of being courted by a president-elect popular in her home state, but that she has no intention of joining the cabinet. Mr. Trump has started assessing other candidates for Agriculture, including Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter of Idaho.

Yet most troubling to congressional Republicans is the Montana seat, which they lost in 2012 in part because a Libertarian on the ballot received late support from a liberal group and captured enough of the vote to ensure Mr. Tester’s re-election.

House and Senate Republicans had little warning about the decision to select Mr. Zinke and pass over Ms. McMorris Rodgers. Indeed, some House Republican leadership aides believed that Ms. McMorris Rodgers already had the job in hand.

Mr. Trump’s choice of Mr. Zinke, who was not on an initial list of potential Interior candidates, was driven in part by the enthusiasm of Donald Trump Jr., according to several people with direct knowledge of the decision.

A hunter with a professed interest in land issues, the younger Mr. Trump is a member of a sportsmen’s group, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, that vigorously criticized Ms. McMorris Rodgers as a candidate for the Interior Department because of her support for selling off public land.

The president of that group, Land Tawney, is a supporter of Mr. Tester who ran a “super PAC” supporting the Democrat’s last re-election campaign. He denied any ulterior motive in backing Mr. Zinke for the cabinet, calling him an ideal candidate on many of the organization’s core issues.

Mr. Tawney said he had not spoken directly with Donald Trump Jr. about the interior secretary position, but said he assumed Mr. Trump had been aware of the group’s views on Ms. McMorris Rodgers. He characterized the president-elect’s son as a child of privilege who nevertheless enjoys “the challenge, the solitude, the toil, the sweat that is public land hunting.”

“It’s a pretty good sign that he’s having influence over his father,” Mr. Tawney said. “I think he’s having an influence that brings that kind of sportsman’s conservation ethic forward.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 17, 2016, on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Defied G.O.P. in Choice for Interior. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe